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When Virginia State Police announced last week that it would resume enforcing the commonwealth’s universal background check requirement for private firearm sales — in direct defiance of a Lynchburg Circuit Court injunction that halted enforcement of the law — gun-rights groups didn’t wait around to see what would happen next. They went straight back to court.
On June 3, the court delivered exactly the response Virginia’s executive branch should have expected.
Judge F. Patrick Yeatts ruled that his statewide permanent injunction remains fully in effect and that Virginia law enforcement is expected to comply with that order. The ruling shut down Attorney General Jay Jones’s apparent theory that an executive branch officer can effectively dissolve a court injunction by deciding it no longer applies — and confirmed what gun-rights groups had been arguing since the State Police announcement: that the executive branch doesn’t get to unilaterally override court orders just because new legislation passes.
What just happened
As TTAG reported earlier this week, the dispute began when the Virginia Attorney General’s office informed the Virginia Citizens Defense League that Virginia State Police would resume universal background checks for private firearm sales — despite Judge Yeatts’s October 29, 2025, permanent injunction halting enforcement of that exact law.
Gun Owners of America and VCDL responded immediately with a contempt of court motion. The motion’s framing was unusually direct:
“It appears that the Commonwealth’s Executive Branch of government no longer has any respect for the rule of law. From the same Attorney General who brazenly sought to usurp his predecessor’s constitutional role before he even assumed office, Attorney General Jay Jones now informs this Court that its October 29, 2025, Final Order means nothing, and that Jones, as an executive branch officer and officer of the court, may unilaterally determine that a court’s order is no longer in effect.”
The court didn’t take long to agree.
The ruling
Judge Yeatts confirmed on June 3 that his permanent injunction remains fully in effect and that Virginia law enforcement is expected to comply. The court has called both parties back later this month for further proceedings in the ongoing case.
Within hours, Virginia State Police updated its website to reflect the court’s ruling. The page now states the agency is “in compliance with the injunction” and “currently cannot provide criminal history background checks for the private sale of firearms.”
That’s a quick reversal from the position Virginia State Police took last week. It’s also the correct one — the position the agency should have been taking all along, before the AG’s office decided that new legislation gave the executive branch authority to ignore court orders without going back to court first.
What this means
The ruling matters beyond the specific background check question because it confirms something fundamental about how court orders work in the American legal system. An injunction remains in effect until the issuing court dissolves it. Executive branch officers — including state attorneys general, governors, and law enforcement agencies — don’t get to decide on their own that an injunction no longer applies. If the state believes the injunction should be lifted because circumstances have changed (new legislation, new facts, whatever), the proper procedure is to return to the court and seek dissolution.
Virginia tried to skip that step. The court told them no.
I’ve never taken part in a political protest myself. I vote religiously. I had a couple of good friends give their lives to ensure that I could do that, and I can see the direct results of my actions. Traipsing about in a mob shouting vapid slogans, by contrast, just seems like a waste of breath. I’m too busy raising my family and making a living to squander the time I have on this planet in such frivolous pursuits.
The Problem with People
Despite our many-splendored, well-advertised warts, ours is still the most effective representative democracy in the history of the world. That’s not a tough claim to prove. However, being the richest, most powerful nation on Earth brings along with it certain implicit responsibilities.
Folks gripe about it all the time, but the rest of the world wants us in their business. I don’t much covet great wealth myself. I have known a few uber-rich people, and they get pestered for stuff constantly. Everybody always seems to want a piece of that. The same thing applies to nation-states. The world whines about how meddlesome the U.S. is right up until they need something.
Humans squabble on scales both large and small. It is in our DNA. Toddlers pummel one another over fish crackers in daycare, while India and Pakistan exchange artillery rounds over disputed mountain passes. I wish that wasn’t the case, but I wish I could wake up every morning and poop out gold nuggets as well. It’s an imperfect world.
The Sort-Of War
The crisis du jour is Iran. As I type these words, things have been on-and-off kinetic in the Middle East between Iran and the Israel/U.S. coalition for about three months. While America is nominally at war, we Americans don’t much notice. Gas is expensive, but it was more expensive under Biden for reasons I still don’t really understand. (Gas averages $4.49 per gallon today. It was $5.02 per gallon in June of 2022.) It’s not natural for a nation to be at war while its people remain comfortable at home. Such stuff encourages us to do too much if it, methinks.
Anyway, we beat the holy bejeebers out of the Iranian military, and the lunatic nutjobs who run that place seem more than happy to murder tens of thousands of their own dissidents and lob Shaheds at passing ships in the Straits of Hormuz until the world starves to death. The species needs a breakthrough. While I’m not much into political protest myself, I would like to offer my solution to our great nation’s leadership gratis. I think we need to build a Freedom Box.
The Problem
At its heart, the issue is not theology, economics, or geopolitics. The problem is that the Iranian people don’t have any guns. When the government retains a monopoly on deadly force, the people are intrinsically subjugated. Those great old guys who thought up this amazing experiment in democracy back in 1776 knew that and codified the individual ownership of firearms into our founding documents right at the beginning. Certain strata of our population vociferously despise that, but it is those very freedoms that allow them to dye their hair cerulean and wander about in public screaming about stuff.
The Freedom Drop Solution
The Altor single-shot 9mm pistol is comprised of a grand total of six component parts. The MSRP is $129. I landed mine for a C-note. Sporting a glacial rate of fire and the most rudimentary of sights, it’s not much of a gun. However, I bet a zillion of them airdropped into Tehran would change the calculus in that craptastic place overnight.
If I were in charge, we’d pack little care package shoeboxes with an Altor pistol, half a dozen 9mm ball rounds, a cheap tiny solar-powered radio, and copies of the Holy Bible and the U.S. Constitution translated into Farsi. Then we’d ask the CIA to gift these things to the Iranian people by the thousands and just let them go at it. That sounds expensive, only it’s not. A TLAM cruise missile costs $3 million apiece, and we’ve already burned through about a thousand of them. $3 million would buy you 23,255 Altor 9mm pistols even if we paid retail. I’d bet Uncle Sam could get us a decent deal if we bought in bulk.
It might seem that this essay is tongue-in-cheek, only it’s not. The Iranian theocrats retain power because they enjoy a monopoly on both information and deadly force. The human spirit naturally yearns to be free. I’d bet that all the Iranians really need is a little nudge.
